The Magic Engineer (17 page)

“That’s all.” Yarrl lowers the hammer.

Dorrin lets the two-chambered great bellows expand, locks the overhead lever in place, and then dips the rag in leather oil and carefully dusts the outside of the bellows suspended at the east side of the square forge. Yarrl puts away the straight peen hammer and the anvil tongs.

Dorrin racks his hammer and picks up the broom. Although sweeping the hard clay is not strictly necessary every night, Dorrin feels better when the smithy is as clean and neat as he can leave it. He has already replaced the less-used implements in their racks, the ones which had gathered some dust. Those Yarrl uses regularly he has left where the smith has placed them.

After Yarrl leaves, Dorrin finishes sweeping the scraps, bits of ash, and droplets of metal too small to reclaim into the waste pit. Then he replaces the broom and scoop and closes the slid
ing door. He walks to the well, where he folds back the cover and draws a bucket of water, still cold despite the coming of spring and sunlight. He washes off the worst of the ash and grime, then waters the small flower garden under the porch with the last drops from the bucket.

After replacing the well cover, he walks toward his room, glancing to the north, and the clouds building up over the northern ocean, and then to the west, where the sun almost touches the tips of the Westhorns, the highest peaks still glittering with ice and snow.

Lifting the latch, he steps inside. The green-dyed rush mat helps make his room seem warmer, as does the old but clean quilt Reisa has provided. Soon, he will finish the braces for the table, and then he will work on something in which to store his few clothes. With a sigh, he picks up the staff behind the door. After closing the door, he walks to the barn.

“Nnnnaaa…” Mora pleads.

Dorrin stops and scratches the nanny’s head, adding a trace of order to the goat. One offspring is strong enough to survive, but the black flame of order is too weak for mother and even one kid. He purses his lips, realizing how much he did not learn. He scratches Mora’s head again as she rubs against his hand. After a time, he steps back from the fence. “That’s all, girl.”

Then he opens the barn door. Once inside, he leans the staff against the wall, and hangs up the rough straw figure he uses as a target. Even after a few eight-days, he can sense a growing sureness in his hands and his staff—not that exercises are any substitute for practice with a real person. But at least he can feel what he is doing with the staff.

After the first set of exercises, he throws the rope over the beam and ties the small sandbag to it, then swings the bag out. Once he manages five successive strikes on the moving bag, each from a balanced position, but generally he has trouble with both balance and accuracy after two or three.

He is sweating again when he stops, and his knees are rubbery. Just a short period of exercise with the staff following a long day is exhausting. After storing his targets, he sets the staff aside and finds the curry brush. Meriwhen whinnies.

“Yes, I know. I should have curried you first. But I’ll ride you after supper.”

The mare whinnies again.

“After supper. I promise.” Dorrin sneezes once, then again, before he steps into the stall and begins to groom the black mare.

Dorrin ties Meriwhen to the iron ring on the weathered timber post outside the mill building—a shed-roofed structure twenty cubits wide and fifty cubits deep with only a single sliding door. The door is ajar enough for him to enter without turning sideways. Once inside, a row of high small windows on the south side of the mill provide enough light to guide him to a single small cubicle in the southeast corner of the building, less than a dozen cubits from the idle saw blade.

Dorrin’s nose itches from the sawdust raised by his steps, and he rubs it before stepping into the office where a young black-bearded man sits, slowly chewing on some cheese and bread.

“I beg your pardon. Are you Hemmil?”

“Me? Hemmil? How I wish, young fellow! I’m Pergun, just a journeyman mill hand.” Pergun’s eyes study Dorrin’s brown clothes. “Why does a healer need Hemmil? You are a healer, aren’t you, looking like that?”

“I’m partly a healer, but I’m mostly an apprentice smith for Yarrl. I didn’t need Hemmil, exactly, but I was looking for some mill scraps…”

“No doubt wonderful scraps two or three cubits long and finely cut?” Pergun speaks with his mouth full and bits of food fly with the words.

“Darkness, no. I meant real scraps. I mean, if I found an end perhaps half a cubit or cubit…”

“All right, young fellow.” Pergun laughs, then stands and walks to the doorway of the walled-off room, swallowing the last of his midday meal. “Hemmil’ll be back in a bit, and we’ll get back to work. Till then, you can scout up some scraps. There’s also the burn bin over there. Bring what you want back here, and we’ll dicker.” He turns, then looks back at Dorrin. “Why does a smith want scraps, anyway?”

“Oh, Yarrl doesn’t. I need them for my work.” A faint headache reminds Dorrin he must provide further explanation. “I’m making some working models.”

“Oh…I suppose that makes sense.” Pergun’s hand lifts, as if to scratch his head, then drops. “Well…bring the wood you want back here.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Young fellow—what’s your name?”

“Oh, I’m Dorrin.”

“How do you get on with Mistress Petra? Understand she’s got…I mean…maybe you’ve heard…well…”

Dorrin grins. “She doesn’t have an evil eye, if that’s what you mean. Neither does Reisa. They’re good people, even if they stay to themselves.”

“Wondered about that. Honsard says Yarrl does good work. Did some good stuff for Hemmil, too. The new saw blade was his. Keeps its teeth better than Henstaal’s, but we can’t say much.” The millworker jabs a thumb toward the sawdust and fragments beneath the still saw blade. “Better get moving, Dorrin.”

Dorrin collects likely lengths of wood, his eyes wandering around the long mill shed as he does. The odor of cut wood is somehow soothing, even in the chill of the mill shed. He needs to hurry, for Yarrl has agreed only reluctantly to let him take a little time, and only because the mill is never open later than the smithy.

When he has what he needs, Dorrin turns back toward the entry, cradling the short lengths of red oak and the armful of mill ends, setting them on the bench outside the office where the brown-haired man is talking to Pergun.

“…have to charge him…every apprentice in Diev…be out here…”

“Yes, ser. He only wants short pieces, though.”

“…short pieces…we’ll see…”

Both men turn as if they sense Dorrin. Hemmil nods at Pergun, and the younger man walks out to the bench. Hemmil steps past the two and heads toward the saw.

“How much for these?” Dorrin asks.

“I’d give them to you, but—” Pergun nods toward the mill owner.

“I heard.” Dorrin looks down at the odd-sized pile. “Perhaps a copper?” He tried to keep his voice from sounding plaintive.

“It’s not as though I see any large pieces.” Pergun grins, running a hand through his dark beard. “So a copper it is, but only because I’d not want ill will from any healer. Leastwise, that’s what I’ll tell Hemmil.”

Dorrin scrabbles in his purse.

“Like as it’s fine with me to give them to you, but Hemmil would fry me. It’s not been that long since I was an apprentice, and I know apprentices have little enough.” Pergun pauses. “You ever go to Kyril’s? Some of us gather there on the eight-day ends.”

“I haven’t been. I don’t know Diev very well, and I’m pretty tired to go off doing much exploring.”

“You’re too young not to explore.” Pergun shakes his head. “You’ll marry Mistress Petra and never go anywhere.”

“Not Mistress Petra, nice as she is,” Dorrin protests.

“Then come and see Diev.”

“Maybe I will.” Dorrin produces the copper and hands it to Pergun.

Pergun shakes his head. “Any end-day…and bring a few coppers. That’s all it takes.”

Dorrin scoops up the wood. “Probably not this end-day, but soon.”

With a groan, Dorrin carries the staff into the open space in the middle of the barn, beginning the exercises Lortren taught him more than a year earlier—has it been so long already? Concentrating on the staff, he tries to blend the order within him, the staff, and his movements. After a time, he sets up the swinging target and launches it, then sets his stance, trying to strike from the totally balanced position.

“Offf…” He has stepped too close to the second stall, and the staff ricochets off a wooden brace. Trying to regain his balance, Dorrin slips on the loose straw and staggers. Incidents
such as these both keep him practicing and ensure that he practices out of sight.

Finally, drenched with sweat, with odd pieces of straw and chaff clinging to his damp face and arms, he sets the staff down.

“Your moves are pretty good, but you’re acting like it’s an exercise.” Reisa stands just inside the doorway.

Dorrin lets the end of the staff drop to the packed clay of the barn floor.

“You’re not really following through, and if you had to use that, a good blade would only have to step back a bit.”

“I know. Kadara kept telling me that.” Dorrin gestures toward the swinging target. “That’s why I set this target up.”

“Just take another step forward when you make the follow-up thrust.” Reisa grins. “Actually, you’re pretty good. Especially for a smith who’s also a healer. What could you do with a blade?”

“Nothing.”

“That because you’re a healer?”

Dorrin wipes his forehead with the back of his bare forearm, then nods.

“Are your friends that good with their blades?”

“Better. Much better.”

A gust of wind blows through the open barn door, whipping Reisa’s trousers around her legs. “I wish…” The gray-haired and one-handed woman shakes her head.

“You wish you’d been born in Recluce?” Standing by Meriwhen’s stall, Dorrin unties the rope for his swinging target. “Where were you trained?”

“A long ways from here.” She looks over her shoulder. “Southwind.”

“Do you wish you’d never left?”

“Sometimes. But you don’t ever get what you wish for, only what you can make happen.” Reisa pauses. “You going to be here for supper?”

“I don’t think so. I’m supposed to meet Brede and Kadara at the inn.”

“They’re too good to be here.”

Dorrin lowers the target, waiting for the smith’s wife to continue.

“When you’re too good for what you’re doing,” she reflects,
her eyes focused on the past, “chaos finds you. With you, it will take longer.”

“Why?” Dorrin coils the rope attached to the target.

“You haven’t learned all you need to know.” Reisa smiles faintly. “But don’t pay too much attention to an old woman’s ramblings. Have a good time with your friends.” She leaves the barn as quietly as she entered.

After putting away his exercise gear, Dorrin takes out the curry brush and starts to work on Meriwhen. The mare shivers slightly and edges sideways in the stall. He pats her flank. “Lady, we need to keep you in shape.”

Following the grooming, he washes up at the well and towels fully dry in his quarters, putting on his clean traveling clothes—linen shirt and brown trousers. Then he slips on the thin leather jacket and heads to the barn.

Dorrin saddles Meriwhen deliberately. Should he take his staff? He frowns but places it in the lance holder and leads the mare into the yard. Red dust puffs under his brown-booted feet.

A spray of yellow straggles from the flower bed in front of the back porch, and the purple of the sage brightens the green of herb garden in the late afternoon sun. Taking a deep breath, he enjoys the scent of the flowers and the herbs, almost lost in the smell of the meadow behind the house.

He swings into the saddle, far more easily than he ever would have believed possible when he first climbed upon Meriwhen so laboriously. Mora bleats from the pen beside the barn, and Dorrin waves—not that the nanny understands—before turning and riding out of the yard and onto the road into Diev.

Scarcely has he turned onto the flattened clay beyond Yarrl’s than he overtakes an empty wagon bearing both Honsard’s emblem and the master hauler.

Dorrin inclines his head. “Good-day, master Honsard.”

“’Day,” grunts the hauler.

Farther along the road, after the clay turns to the stones that lead into the city, but before the low gates that are never watched, the healer passes another wagon bearing stacked bales of hay toward Diev.

White puffy clouds make a line across the western horizon, just below the afternoon sun, when Dorrin reins in Meriwhen
opposite where the inn had stood. Faint smoke rises from the rubble.

Coming from the west, a trooper in the blue of Spidlar reins up in front of the leaning half-wall and the charred sign, not twenty cubits from where Dorrin has halted Meriwhen. Part of the sign is legible—the bottom of a tankard. The top third of the sign has burned away. Behind the leaning and scorched bricks lies a man-high heap of still-smoldering debris, covered with broken tiles from the roof that has collapsed.

“Demons!” mutters the trooper.

A woman holding a child sits on a stone at the edge of the still-smoking rubble. Gray rags flutter around her grimy face in the warm breeze of early summer. “A copper, ser, for my daughter and me to eat? A copper to eat?” She extends a hand to the trooper. “A copper to eat?”

The soldier pauses, then shrugs. “Would have drunk it anyway.” He tosses a coin toward the woman.

The coin clinks on the pavement at her feet, and she leans forward, painfully extending one hand. Another ragged figure darts from the far side of the alley, the side not filled with rubble from the burned inn, and scoops the copper off the stone, running in the general direction of Dorrin.

“Thief!” The beggar woman’s cry is half plaintive, half shriek.

Without thinking, Dorrin finds the staff in his hands, extended, quickly enough to trip the urchin.

“Bastard!” The youth, taller than Dorrin had realized, scrambles to his feet with a short blade glinting. His eyes flicker toward Meriwhen’s legs.

Dorrin shifts the staff, lets it move, and the heavy wood slams the youngster’s wrists. The knife skitters onto the stones. “Toss the coin back to the woman!”

The youth looks toward the knife, then up at Dorrin. He ducks forward, then turns, and dashes across the street and into the other alleyway.

Dorrin’s staff misses this time. He should have practiced the mounted exercises as well, as if there were ever enough time.

The Spidlarian trooper—watching from the saddle—guffaws as Dorrin dismounts and recovers the knife. “Never catch the little bastard, fellow.”

Dorrin slips the urchin’s knife—the metal ugly white and bronze to his senses—into the small pouch at the front of his saddle, where the hilt protrudes slightly. He would prefer not to carry the chaos-tinted metal, fearing that the blade will slice the leather of the pouch.

He also wonders where he should meet Brede or Kadara. They had said the Tankard, not Kyril’s Red Lion. The troopers frequent the Tankard, while the townspeople tend more toward Kyril’s, and call it Kyril’s not the Red Lion.

“Guess the Lion’s all that’s left ’round here, fellow.” The trooper turns his dappled gray back up the street.

Dorrin takes a last look at the burned-out inn and lifts the reins to follows the trooper.

“My copper, ser? Would you forget me?” The woman waddles toward Dorrin. The sense of chaos—not evil, but disorder—wafts from her.

Dorrin scrambles into his pouch and finds a copper, carefully tossing it to her. “Here.” Then he takes the urchin’s knife between two fingers, and tosses it after the coin. “Take that, too. Maybe you can sell it.”

Meriwhen skitters sideways, as if the mare responds to Dorrin’s dislike of the chaos-tinged knife and the almost equally chaotic beggar, before turning up the narrow stone way, passing from the reddish light cast by the sun just above the horizon into the long shadows of the shuttered dry goods store. Dorrin blinks as the hot wind carries grit into his eyes. When he looks up, the beggar woman is gone from the street before the smoldering Tankard.

The stable at the Red Lion is filled, mostly with troopers’ mounts. Dorrin dismounts and, holding the reins, peers toward the end of the narrow shed. He holds his staff in his left hand.

“Healer?” The stringy-haired stableboy looks up from the bale of hay he is dragging toward the second stall.

“Hello, Vaos. You’ve got quite a stableful tonight.”

“Kyril’ll be happy, but the troopers are a pain in the butt.”

“All of them?”

“Demons, no. But you don’t know which are happy drunks and which are mean. And the mean ones are
mean
.”

Dorrin nods.

“Put your mare in the end stall with Kyril’s gray. He’ll be
too busy to notice, and they’re both good horses.”

“You sure?”

“Trust me, healer.”

Dorrin grins, and pats Vaos’s shoulder. “Thanks, friends.”

Vaos smiles back, but looks at the heavy hay bale.

Dorrin sets aside the staff, hands the boy the reins, and shoulders the bale. “Where do you want it?”

“Dump it in the manger in the second stall. I’ll cut the cords and spread it from there.”

In the second stall, a white stallion whinnies, baring his teeth as Dorrin steps up to the manger. The healer pauses, still balancing the bale on his right shoulder, and tries to send a sense of reassurance to the white. After a moment and another protest, the stallion whickers, and Dorrin eases the hay into the open manger. His fingertips brush the stallion’s forehead.

“The white is hurt, somewhere.”

“I didn’t see him come in.” Vaos leads Meriwhen toward the end stall.

Dorrin walks to the stall door. Again, the stallion protests, but eventually Dorrin’s hands glide over his body, finding the whip marks. With another deep breath, he provides a small measure of healing and comfort, of healing and order—only a small measure, for the stallion is at least four cubits at the shoulder. Vaos looks at Dorrin when he leaves the stall.

“Whipped too much.”

“Damned troopers.” Vaos’s words are not an expletive, but a statement.

Dorrin wonders if he has missed Brede’s or Kadara’s mounts. “Not all of them.”

“I’ll get some grain for your mare.”

“You don’t have to.”

Vaos grins. “You didn’t have to help the stallion.”

Dorrin can’t help but grinning back. “I do what I can.” He reclaims his staff. Vaos is rummaging through a barrel with a battered tin cup as Dorrin steps into the twilight and walks toward the inn.

“See! I told you he’d figure it out.” Kadara’s voice brings him up short. She and Brede are waiting outside the door.

“What did you do with your horses?” Dorrin asks.

“Had to put them at the livery stable. What about you?”

“Oh…” Dorrin pauses. “Well…Vaos found a place for Meriwhen.”

“What did you do for him?” Kadara asks, almost condescendingly.

“Nothing much. I just talk to him.”

“You come here alone?”

“No. I’ve been a couple of times with Pergun. He works at the mill.”

Brede grins broadly. “See, Kadara. Your little friend is neither little nor helpless. He just does things his own quiet way.”

“He’s always done things his own stubborn and quiet way.”

Brede shrugs, as if to say, “I tried.”

Dorrin shrugs back.

Kadara looks from one to the other. “Men…”

Brede claims a table vacated by two departing troopers, and Kadara commandeers an empty chair. Before the three are even seated, a heavy-armed serving woman stands there.

“What’s to drink?”

“The dark beer.”

“Same.”

“Redberry,” Dorrin adds.

“Oh, it’s you, healer. What about food?”

“What is there?”

“The usual—stew, fowl pie. That’s for three coppers. For another you can have chops. Don’t bother. They’re not worth it.”

“The stew,” Dorrin says.

“Same here,” both Brede and Kadara say nearly simultaneously.

“And here, I thought we were rescuing you from the continual drudgery of the smithy.” Kadara mock-accuses Dorrin.

“You are. I do occasionally rescue myself, and Pergun does sometimes.”

“You still like working for the smith?”

“I’m still learning. Yarrl keeps telling me how much more I need to know. I think he’s as good as Hegl.”

“Here you be!” Three mugs come down on the table in rapid succession. “That’s two for each.”

Dorrin offers up his two coppers, but Kadara hands a half silver and a copper to the serving woman.

“You didn’t—”

“This time it’s our treat.”

“Thank you.”

“So…how is it really going?” Kadara asks again.

“All right. Yarrl lets me use the forge at night, and I’ve put together a few things. It takes time.”

“You may have more than you thought,” Kadara says in a low voice.

“Why?”

“Fairhaven’s put a surtax on goods from Recluce.”

Dorrin sips the redberry. His stomach growls, and he blushes.

“Don’t you understand?” Kadara asks.

“I’m hungry. But doesn’t that mean—” His stomach growls again.

“The man’s hungry.” Brede laughs. “What Kadara’s saying is that she’s worried. With the tax, fewer and fewer ships will travel between Candar and Recluce, and that when our time is done we won’t be able to get home.”

“Aren’t you?” Kadara looks at her beer.

“What good will it do? Lortren won’t have us back now, and in a year anything can happen.” Brede takes a deep swallow from the gray stoneware mug.

“You two.” Kadara looks from Dorrin to Brede. “You’re too stubborn to give up your machines, and you’re convinced that everything will work out.”

Dorrin hopes his stomach won’t rumble again, and looks toward the kitchen for the waitress and the stew and bread.

“I didn’t say that,” Brede says. “I don’t see much point in worrying about what I can’t change. I can’t stop a war between Recluce and Fairhaven.”

“Will it come to that?” Dorrin asks in spite of himself.

Brede shakes his head. “I think so. For the first time since long before Creslin, the Whites have a truly great wizard.”